Kathryn stares at her front door. The Pogues arrived back home at the break of dawn, and split to get back to their respective houses. Some were happier than others, namely Kie, who flat out refused to have any of her friends with her when she'd walk inside her house. Pope and Cleo were thick as thieves, after the former told her she could stay with him. Very strange that when Kathryn proposed the very same thing, Cleo said no... Sarah went to the Château, either to greet John B, or to wait for him there.

Kathryn and JJ have been staring at the Palace's door for at least five minutes now. Her throat is dry, her stomach in a knot. Her heart is trapped in her ribcage and fights against it to break free. She thinks about all the things she's put her uncles through. Sneaking out, shoving herself in front of danger, getting kidnapped, disappearing for nearly two months, throwing her dad's accident at Henry's face every time he'd so much as mention him, because she was angry. And now that she had vowed to be soft, she found that being mean had always been the easy way out. Henry, she thinks, had held her even when she was burning. Then, she abandoned him... Voluntarily or not, it made no difference.

Henry might very well hate her. And she might forgive him for it, too.

JJ scratches his temple, nervous too. On her behalf, and also because he isn't quite sure how Henry will react to him being here. He could be mad at him. He could pin Kathryn's disappearance on him. JJ isn't an idiot, he knows the kind of reputation he has. Any good parent would probably hold him responsible for their own child's misbehaviour. It doesn't help that Henry knows exactly who his dad is.

He eyes Kathryn. "Henry doesn't hate you."

She rings the doorbell. "Yet."

They wait in silence for a few seconds, Kathryn starting to feel sick to her stomach at the thought of her last remaining family hating her, which she was now convinced of. She was always good at telling herself that people disliked her.

She sees through the reflection someone tall, coming to answer the door. She braces herself. The door opens.

Henry looks down at Kathryn.

Nothing happens for a few seconds, the two Darcys staring at each other, JJ standing to the side in apprehension.

Then tears welled up in Henry's eyes. His hands reach for her, then move to his mouth, in shock, then back to her. Kathryn fears for a second that he's too full of anger to hold her.

"I'm s–"

"Oh– oh my god. Max! Oh, my girl."

Kathryn doesn't realise she's crying until she's sobbing in Henry's arms, her uncle falling to his knees, doubling over from the weight of his relief. "I'm sorry."

Henry holds her face softly in his hands, marvelling at the sight of her, "I thought I'd never see you again. My girl." A sob wrecks his entire body. "My baby girl."

"I'm so sorry," she repeats, crying against his shoulder.

He rubs her back, but she can feel the shake of his hands. Every brush takes away her insecurities until she finds herself a little idiotic.

Over his shoulder, Kathryn sees Max and Billy rushing in. He gasps, holding a hand to his mouth when he sees her, before diving for her and his fiancé.

"Kitty?" Billy blurts out, before bursting into tears and joining them.

"I'm so sorry," Kathryn keeps repeating to anyone who wants to hear.

Max pushes wet hair strands out of her face, from where they stuck to her cheeks. "It's okay now. It's okay, you're here."

Kathryn heaves out a sob, looking at Henry's face, bathed with tears. "Please don't hate me," she cries.

Henry wipes her wet cheeks like he did when she fell down the streets. "I love you," he promises. "But never do that to me again."

She had thought that letting Henry grieve her like a daughter would have prevented him from holding her like she was his. Kathryn didn't mind being wrong about this one.

He stands up, helping her in the same movement, keeping his daughter close to him. At least for a moment. At least until he can convince himself that he is her dad. No one else.

Billy shakes her head, hands on her friend's shoulders, squeezing tightly, tears streaking her face. "I should've helped," she tells Kathryn.

"I wouldn't have let you," she answers.

Max has tears in his blue eyes when he looks at his niece, pats her hair, fixes her clothes. He sniffs, chin still wobbly. His hand settled on the top of her head. "We missed you. So much, kiddo."

Henry turns to JJ, still at the entrance. The teenager isn't sure how to behave under his eyes, half-expecting Henry to tell him to get the hell out of here. He would have every right to. Next thing he knows, the older man has tugged him into a bone crushing hug, and JJ feels like crying too.

"Thank you for bringing her back."

JJ blinks the tears away. "'Course, mister H."

Henry only lets go of the boy to hug his niece again. Niece, he tells himself. If he could spare her what's about to happen, he would. He just got her back. She's still crying, but she isn't sobbing anymore. It felt good to belong again. Henry isn't sure who is holding who.

To have her every sins forgiven by a father.

So much so, that she misses when Max's face turns grim. "Henry. Baby, he'll want to see her."

Henry can't let go, not yet. "I know. Just give me a minute to hold her."

JJ sends Billy a questioning look. Billy looks troubled. Her every emotion is always readable on her face, but he can't quite place this one, and he thinks that may be worse, coming from a Donovan. She looks down, wringing her hands. Oh, what the hell...

Henry lets go. His face is stricken, like he knows how this is all going to end, but can't escape it. He knows the steps, he's practised them when she was a child. He walks away, while Max closes the front door.

Kathryn doesn't know what's going to happen yet. She just floats on a cloud, turns back to JJ, who hugs her, because he can't help it, when she's crying from relief now. He rubs her back.

"You okay?"

She nods, smiling despite her wet face. "Better now."

She parts from him, but he keeps an arm around her shoulder. She may be oblivious, overjoyed that her uncles don't hate her, that they love her, and were waiting for her to come back. But JJ isn't. And he wants to keep her close, for whatever happens next.

Billy walks to her, patting her arm, reassuringly. "Kitty..."

"It's been crazy," Kathryn says at the same time, words suddenly spilling out now that she knew they'll still want her around. "All of it. We were on a deserted island, and then we were kidnapped, and then I was kidnapped and–"

"We know," Max stops her.

Now, that finally got her attention. She wipes the remnants of her tears. A sort of weight settles in her stomach. There aren't a lot of people who could have warned them, and if it wasn't the Pogues...

"What?"

From further down the hall, Henry reappears. "We caught wind yesterday. About Singh. A little birdie told us, didn't he?"

JJ blinks. "Who the fu–"

Henry tugs someone into the hallway. Harshly. "Apologize," he orders the person. "Now. You apologize to her, and you do it well."

It takes JJ an awfully long amount of time to realise who's standing in front of them. The arm around Kathryn drops in surprise, shock. She stands there, still as stone. Her eyes stay on the person, she barely blinks, afraid that the vision – because it had to be a vision – would go away.

At some point, her eyes sting too much. She blinks.

Edward Darcy is still there.

"Hey, Kitten."

Kathryn still doesn't move. In her mind, the movie of her dad plays and plays again, memories upon memories she cherished and sacrificed to the fire, memories she tarnished and venerated both. Memories that would have stayed memories.

JJ finally composes himself. "Oh, that's fucked up."

She starts to hyperventilate under the weight of it all. Chest rising and falling too fast, JJ fussing over her, and her immediately shoving him back, because she fears the embers of a fire she had so neatly put out were being breathed back to life.

Kathryn stared her father down, barely a tear in her eyes. "Who is this?"

The room is silent. No one dares to say anything. No one dares to even move, apart from Henry, who keeps sending his brother, his dead, baby brother, standing there, warning looks.

Edward takes a step forward. "Kitten, I am so, so sorry," he begs.

Kathryn steps back, holds up a hand to stop him. "No," she says, then repeats it. "No, no, you can't be there. Who are you?"

His face falls, crumbles under her words. Kathryn feels very little remorse. She can't hurt a ghost.

"It's me. It's me, your father."

"No!" she cries out, her hand still hanging between them. "No, because my father... my dad. My father died five years ago. So who are you because–"

Her hands fly up to her face, shielding herself from the impossible sight, a broken sob escaping her lips. She had been so happy a few moments ago. Now, she had never felt so betrayed, in a way she could barely articulate.

All anyone can do is stand there, watch as the girl unravels and refuses to be comforted. The room is eerily silent, safe from her cries. All at once, Kathryn is in Rafe's room, Kathryn is in London, Kathryn is in the hospital, Kathryn is sitting at the docks every night waiting for her father who could not come back.

A father that should have come back.

"Is this a joke?" she screams, voice wavering, staring at her father. "Is this a trick? Why are you doing this to me?"

Edward's eyes are welling up with tears, hands shaking from years of holding back from his daughter. Henry gestures for him. "Explain it to her. Go on."

He braces himself. "I had to disappear, Kat. I couldn't contact you, or Henry, or even Caroline, they would have traced it back to me. Your mom managed to send me information about you, but that's all we could risk. I know. Everything." Kathryn's world starts spinning. "But I made some bad decisions in the name of research. I put it first, and that's something I can't absolve myself of. That man – Singh – he was after me. I said I'd help him in his stupid quest. If I'd stayed behind, he would've gone after you."

"He did come after her," JJ barks out.

"I know, some of my old contacts told me. That's why we were all ready. We were going to come get you this morning. You beat us to it," he admits softly, and his daughter scoffs. "Once I was back on OBX. When I learned that Singh was after you and your friends, I knew I had to come back."

A few days ago? Edward Darcy had come back for her, years too late. Too late.

"That's when?" Kathryn says. "Now? After years of waiting for you to come back. After years of hating myself, years of dealing with what your departure took from me. You left me with mum. And... and you even know how bad it was, god – I tried to kill myself! And you come back now," she sobs, gesturing to herself wildly. "You come back now that the damage can't be undone. Now that I'm this. How dare you?"

Kathryn thinks of dozens upon dozens of times her father could have told her in any way that he was alive, ways upon ways in which he could have saved her life. Of the version she would be, if he had never died. Easier to love, easier to be loved. Soft, and kind, and happy.

She feels sick that her father had left that little girl, and had come back to a grotesque caricature of her. Even if she wasn't a monster anymore, she had been one. Her skin still smelled like ash, her body littered in scars, branded with hot iron.

She doesn't realise that her father is standing in front of her until he reaches out to her shoulder. She looks up at him, trembling, crying. He's aged. She never thought she'd see him age.

He's crying, too. There is an ocean of pain in his eyes, that Kathryn can't deny that she is his daughter – she is drowning in it too. "Leaving you behind, Kitten, was the hardest thing I've ever done," he tells her, voice wavering. "The worst thing. I'm sorry, but I understand if you can't forgive me, because I don't forgive myself. You were my baby girl" – his voice cracks – "and I let you down. But you have to believe me, Kat, when I say that this was for you. To keep you safe."

She shakes her head. "I wasn't safe. I don't think I am, even now." Not from herself, at least.

"I know. But I'm here now."

Maybe if he had been back sooner this summer, before Kathryn had vowed to be kind, maybe she would have driven him away. Maybe she would have taken this blessing as a curse, a joke, a trick.

Now, she was tired, and her father was alive.

Kathryn hugs her father like her life depends on it, and for a moment, it does. A piece of her seems finally put to rest as her dad hugs her, a piece she hadn't seen in a long time. She feels his tears on her shoulder, holding on to any little detail. Her father was back. After five years, he was back from the dead.

"I'm sorry," he breathes out, again. "Please don't hate me."

She shakes her head against him. Kathryn had never been forgiving. She would keep tabs of every wrong anyone has ever done to her. But that was her dad. Her dad, who had done all of this to protect her. Her dad, who would tell her stories of the Royal Merchant, pirates, Denmark Tanny.

"I missed you too much," she answers when he sets her down, sniffling. "Sorry I got so angry."

His father smiles at her, like he used to when he picked her up from school. "Not at all. You wouldn't be a Darcy if you didn't. Just ask Henry." Henry scoffs loudly.

Kathryn can't help but smile. Her father's daughter. Her anger was his, not her mother's. If it was, maybe that meant it wasn't such a vile thing, as she thought. She liked the thought of having something to share with her father, who kept smiling at her. Her favourite person in the whole wide world, when she was a kid.

Which leads her to take JJ's hand, when she steps back. JJ squeezes her palm, unsure if he should say anything, the moment feeling so much bigger than him.

Edward follows the movement. "JJ, right?"

Kathryn shares a look with her boyfriend. Should she be doing this now? No. She should be sleeping, she's barely standing, she's cried more now than she has in forever, and she smells, even if she's taken a shower more recently than the others, but she's too afraid that her dad will disappear when she wakes up.

JJ seems nervous under Darcy's inspection. He doesn't remember much of the man, mainly what Kathryn had told him after his death. He was always pretty reserved. But he was an institution in Kildare, and his girlfriend's dad. That was enough to make him uneasy.

"Of course I remember you." Edward smiles warmly. "Thank you for watching over her, kid."

He's shocked for a moment, at how similar his voice and eyes look like Henry's, but so different at the same time. He's not sure how, but it just is. "Uh... my pleasure, sir."

Max clears his throat, joining his fiancé's side. Henry looks cryptic. Kathryn is too blinded by her dad's return to notice it, which might be worse for him. Maybe he'd started to close in on herself when his kid hugged her dad, and it wasn't him.

"We should all get some rest," Max says, ever the voice of reason. "I don't know how you kids feel, but you look worse for wear."

"Like you could use a bed," Billy adds, trying to make light of the conversation, helping her older brother.

JJ laughs awkwardly. "Yeah, I'd love a bed."

Henry raises a finger. "As long as it's not Kat's–"

"Hen." He looks over at his younger brother, eyebrows raised. "They've been living together for two months. It's a bit silly, at this point."

He clamps his jaw shut, but sends the teenage boy a warning glance. Kathryn can't help the sudden fear that seizes her, when JJ tugs her hand and they walk silently to the stairs. She stops him, and turns to her father, hugging him again.

"Please don't be gone when I wake up."

Edward smiles, hugging his daughter tighter. "Never again, Kitten. I promise." Henry looks away.

Deep down, Kathryn realises that the worst thing she could have ever done was when she stopped waiting. But it didn't matter anymore, and Edward Darcy hugged her like she was twelve again. So maybe, everything was right. Maybe her sins had indeed been forgiven, by a father. Just not by an uncle.

At least, everything was right.

Author's Note: Henry Darcy you are father to a lot of these bitches I fear ........ also happy Kat arc!!!!!!!! HAPPY KAT ARC!!!!!!!!!!!!